Homemade Herbal Teas

One of the most rewarding discoveries that I have made recently is the ability to be able to make my own herbal teas and gear them towards my personal needs. 

I don’t have any idea how many people share similar issues as me but my main struggle is getting enough sleep on a daily basis. Getting a restful nights sleep is so important to me. Yes there are other things like boosting my immune and detoxing that are important as well but the most important thing for me currently is sleep. 

I first started researching growing my own herbs a few years ago when I began purchasing a lot of teas from my local grocery store and online. I realized how much money I was spending on them so I began paying closer attention to the listed ingredients on the box and researched whether I could grown them myself and where to purchase seeds.

The first two herbs that I tried growing was Holy Basil and Lemongrass. Not for sleep but mostly for overall health and relaxation. Both of them are annuals so I would need to replant each year, which I don’t mind, as I later found they both are very easy to start from seed indoors. 

After I had success with growing those, I started looking into growing more herbs, like Valerian root and Skullcap. I had success growing both but later decided that skullcap had too many possible side effects so I decided it’s just pretty grown as a flower and don’t currently use it in any of my teas. Ive always had a love for chamomile tea and this seemed like a very simple plant to grow. I have tried growing it for several years and the plants ever seemed to thrive long enough to collect a good amount of blossom from them until this last year. I planted several plants and two of them produced a great amount of blossoms for making tea. 

(The above photos are the holy basil on left and skullcap on the right )

For the holy basil they were easy to harvest, dry and store in glass containers with bamboo lids. I dried them upside down inside for several weeks.  I now have a new dedicated shelf for all my teas as my cabinet is too small for my growing collection now.

(The above photos are harvested lemongrass)

The Pictures below are Valarian plants. Not only are they beautiful, but the blossoms attract all kinds of beneficial insects to the garden as well. The roots harvested and dried and placed into jars.

I found that harvesting Valerian root to be so different than anything that Ive ever done before. I typically have only known herbs to be used for the leaves and blossoms so this was new to me. I did also dig up some dandelion roots recently as well which was very similar but with dandelions you can also use the flowers and the leaves, and I am not familiar with the Valerian plant being used this way. Once digging up the roots I washed them and removed all the dirt before drying them and cutting up the roots for storage. This is time consuming but I really am enjoying the benefits of the tea. It really helps me to get to sleep at night and recently found that this root may also play an importance in relief of some menopausal symptoms which I find so fascinating that an herb can have such a wide range of benefits.

CHAMOMILE

Chamomile flowers are shown below. I am extremely happy with how my plants grew this year and was able to get my first real harvest for making teas. I will try and be more diligent about picking the blossoms on a daily basis as I feel that I could have harvested more if I just took the time in my busy schedule.